IN NORTHERN MISTS 



these plans occurred to him after he had heard of this expe- 

 dition, and had become familiar at first hand with the ideas 

 of western lands which dominated the minds of the sailors 

 of western Europe (Englishmen and Portuguese) of that 

 time. With the many fresh arguments he brought with him 

 from Italy and the Mediterranean countries, it cannot have 

 been difficult for him to induce the merchants of Bristol to 

 make fresh attempts to find these countries in the west or 

 north-west; and, to judge from Ayala's letter of 1497 about 

 the expeditions sent out annually for the previous seven 

 years, he seems to have been persistent. 



We do not know whether Cabot himself took part in the 

 attempts made after 1490. None of them seems to have met 

 with any success before 1497, for otherwise it would have been 

 mentioned. But it was while the people of Bristol were 

 occupied with such enterprises that Cabot's great fellow- 

 countryman, Columbus, made his remarkable voyage across 

 the ocean farther to the south, in 1492, and found a new world, 

 which he took to be India. With that came the awakening with 

 which the time was pregnant. The news of the achievement, 

 which fired all the adventurers of Europe, must soon have 

 reached Bristol, and put new life and a wider purpose into 

 the old plans. ^ That Cabot now became the soul of these 



1 The Minister, Raimondo di Soncino, says in his letter of December 18, 

 1497, to the Duke of Milan, that Cabot, "after having seen that the Kings of 

 Spain and Portugal had acquired unknown islands, had proposed to obtain a 

 similar acquisition for the King of England." It cannot be concluded from 

 this that it was not till then that Cabot formed his plans, though probably it 

 was at that time that he first entered into negotiations with the King of Eng- 

 land. It is in the same letter that Soncino tells of Cabot's speculations on see- 

 ing caravans arriving at Mecca from the Far East with spices, etc. His son, 

 Sebastian Cabot, who evidently, on several occasions, made it appear as though 

 he himself and not his father had discovered the American continent, is re- 

 ported (according to the statement of the anonymous guest in Ramusio, see 

 below) to have said that he (i.e., Sebastian) got the idea of his expedition after 

 having heard of the discovery of Columbus, which was a common subject of 

 conversation at the court of Henry VII. But even if Sebastian's words are 

 correctly reported, which is doubtful, he must demonstrably have been lying, 

 and therefore no weight can be attached to his statement; if he could sacrifice 

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